WHY IS WEB DESIGN IMPORTANT?

Transform Your Website into a Lead Magnet

Web design, crafted by skilled designers, harnesses technology to transform your website into a lead-generating hub! This episode reveals why web design is important, offering a designer’s blueprint to convert users into customers. Create a bold, visual CTA that grabs attention, ensure accessibility with clear headlines and white space, and answer key questions to build trust. Thoughtful visual elements, like vibrant images, keep users engaged, while Google Analytics tracks conversions, letting you tweak button colors or layouts. Whether you’re a retailer or service provider, smart web design maximizes leads from existing traffic. Empower your designer to use accessible technology and visual flair, and watch your small business thrive as your site becomes a welcoming, conversion-driven space that delivers real results for users!

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Episode Transcript – Why Is Web Design Important?

Jesse Dolan (00:19)
Everyone welcome back to the show. This is Luminate Local. I’m your host, Jesse Dolan, helping local and small businesses grow their visibility online for decades. And just as importantly, turn that visibility into real leads and real clients and customers for their businesses. Today, we’re going to be talking about something that often gets overlooked a little bit in the SEO conversation. That’s web design. So you might have traffic. You might even rank really well, right?

But if your website doesn’t convert, meaning if visitors don’t take action, right? Instead of just reading or watching your content online, if they don’t call you, email you, fill out a form, take the next step, you know, whatever it is. Visitors to your site don’t take action. What’s the point, right? They’re just visitors to your website. So in this episode, we’re answering the why is web design important question and more specifically, how’s it going to impact your leads?

How’s it going to impact your SEO? How’s it going to impact your bottom line? Okay. So as always, you know, if you’re listening to this, you’re probably a local small business owner, maybe a marketing manager, SEO pro, webmaster, whatever it is, you’re working on the website, right? We’re working on your SEO. You’re working on your online visibility. And you know, the number one goal we have, where do we start is just get traffic, just getting visibility. That is not the ultimate goal though, for our business, right?

Really at the end of the day, we want to get leads. We want to get opt-ins. We want to get clients and customers, whatever it is. I’m just going to call them leads going forward here. And I think you all will know what I mean in the rest of this episode. We don’t want to just show up. We want to get the leads. So if you want your visitors to fill out a form, call your office, walk through your front door, whatever it is, buy your products and services. We’ve got some tips and some tricks that are going to help you out here today.

So the problem you’re probably having right now is your website isn’t converting or maybe you feel like it can be converting at a higher rate. A lot of people visiting, maybe they’re not taking action. Hopefully you’re tracking some of this and have visibility to some of this with Google Analytics or other tools. So we’re not just guessing that’s going to be an important theme here, but you feel unsure about how to fix your website, you’re not tracking those conversions maybe, maybe not sure what’s working, what needs to change, what opportunity do you have, how much room for improvement is there, and kinda what impact you may be able to feel with a better set of metrics, right?

I guess is maybe a good way to say it. So maybe you’ve thought just the way it is, it’s always been this way, right? If we want more clients, we just push more traffic. We just do more ads. We just do whatever. And that’s not wrong, but this here is about efficiency at the end of the day. It’s going to be way easier to increase, just say if you want 10% more leads, it’s way easier to increase your conversions by 10% than to increase the traffic by 10%. Right?

So if we just want whatever, just 10 more leads this month for your business, if you had to increase the overall traffic at your current conversion rates to get you 10 more clients versus just getting 10 more clients from the traffic you already have, well, getting the 10 more clients from the traffic you already have, it’s going to be a whole heck of a lot easier for you. And that’s really what we’re going to be talking about here today. Good web design helps you make the most of the traffic you already have.

Now, of course, if we work on these conversions and we level up getting more out of the traffic you already have, if then down the road you increase your traffic, I mean, now we’re okay. So let’s just be clear about that. I’ve been in this game for quite a long time and this is a part that really just escapes a lot of clients, at least on the onset, right? We just focus on ranking. We focus on visibility. We focus on, you know, just more volume, but really if we’re not addressing the website design and conversions, at least on a basic level, we are kind of throwing good money after bad sometimes.

So here’s a practical plan that you can start using hopefully right now. And actually let me pause real quick. I was gonna do this a little bit earlier, but I forgot before we go any further, I do want to talk about reviews. If you’ve listened to this show for any of these episodes so far, you know that we read a review from our audience on every episode. Getting reviews is the feedback mechanism that we have that lets us know, is this content good? Are we helping? Do you like what we’re teaching? Right? Is there real world value?

And we would ask you for reviews. So if you’re liking this content, if you’re liking this episode or any previous episodes you’ve listened to or watched on YouTube, we’d love to get a review from you. Definitely helps us out. Right? We’re talking exposure and visibility here. The more reviews we get, the more the show becomes known, the more the show becomes exposed and that ultimately helps our business. So if we’re helping your business, we’d love you to help our business. Please leave us a review. If you do leave us a review, we’re going to read it on the show.

I’m going to read this review here from Christie Lee Thompson. This is a great five-star review that we received on Google. Christie says, Jesse is highly knowledgeable and able to explain website development and SEO or search engine. Excuse me. Search engine optimization to novices. Thanks for that great five-star review, Christie. And I can’t believe I couldn’t say search engine optimization without fumbling there. I’ve said it like a kajillion times. So that’s kind of funny. But

Nonetheless, Christie left us a great review again, luminatelocal.com scroll down, click on the link for reviews. We would love to hear from you. You can read all the other reviews that we get. And also we have buttons there to make it easy for you to leave us a review. If you want to leave it on Facebook, if you want to leave it on Apple podcasts, if you want to leave it on Google, whatever it is, we take reviews wherever we can get them. We read them on the show and we absolutely appreciate and love that type of feedback. So we’d love to hear from you.

All right, back to the show. So let’s walk through the essential parts of a website and web design that converts for your business. So first things first, we have to have a good foundation on SEO. Before you start tweaking your design, I would just say audit that page, whether this be your homepage or any other landing page. And by the way, we’re talking about this, this is really a page by page process.

Pages convert, right? Your website doesn’t convert. It’s any individual page that we’re on. So just make sure that there’s a good SEO foundation. If you’re going to change or redesign your site in some way and update these pages, well, let’s make sure we’re throwing SEO at it at the same time, right? So now is the perfect time to fix any weak spots, maybe page speed. If there’s any broken links or quality content, things like that, right? Bad architecture, lacking of pictures, old pictures, whatever.

Let’s make sure we take a look at these things because your website can look good and rank well, right? That’s what we’re looking for here. So first things first, make sure we got a good SEO foundation. If there’s things you want to tweak, go ahead and tweak them. If there’s things you just want to make a note about so that when we come through and we do some of this conversion optimization that you just tackle at the same time, either way, just make sure we’re not ignoring SEO in the process here. Okay.

So second, establish one clear Call to Action or CTA on the page. Okay, so there’s an asterisk. If you have two, maybe that’s okay. If you are gonna have two or three, whatever, I’m gonna establish some best practices and kind of go through a few things that work really good for a single CTA. If you have two of them, just apply the same thing, right? One of the things we’re talking about here is color, right? If you have two CTAs, make sure they’re different colors, is an example here.

I let you parse that out. We’re just going to talk about one CTA here. So that’s the best rule of thumb is just one clear CTA on the page. Cause we don’t want to confuse our visitors. Usually there’s a particular path that we want them to go through. One main goal, one main directive, one main thing we’re trying to have them do right. Is that to call us? Is that to submit a form? Is that to book a meeting? Is that to come into the store? You know, here’s the directions, whatever it is.

There’s usually one thing you’d really like visitors to take action on when they’re on a page or website. So a single bold call to action button is a really good place to start with some contrasting color that stands out. Ideally that color and maybe the phrase on it even is only used at the CTA, right? Maybe don’t have the color of the button be the same primary color that’s everywhere else on your website. It just kind of blend in.

If you have whatever, if you don’t have red anywhere on your website, like red’s a great color for a CTA button. It jumps out, it’s alarming, it’s attention grabbing. Looks good to the eye, things like that, right? So less is more, clarity wins. Make sure your CTA stands out on the page as the single thing. If somebody’s just gonna scan the page, right, and skim the page. We want that CTA to jump out. We want them to know this is the next thing you need to do. You found us, you’re in the right spot. Now do this. Okay.

So again, less is more, clarity wins when it comes to the CTA. Next, make it an easy action to take. If it’s a button, make it big, make it visible, right? We don’t want, if it’s on mobile, we don’t want big sausage fingers trying to click a little bitty button or a little bitty text, right? You want to make it obvious. Don’t make people think. If it’s a form you’re looking to have somebody fill out, keep it short, keep it simple. You can have additional forms for next steps. You can collect more data down the road.

So if it’s a form, what’s the minimum amount of information that you need to, you know, get it into your, get this lead into your pipeline and get the process going, whatever. If you’re looking to have people call you, make sure your phone number is big, put it on the top of the page, make it a contrasting color, right? Put it again in the footer. Sprinkle it throughout the page and other spots. Make it very easy to find that phone number. Make it attractive.

The same with if it’s your address, right? If people are gonna, if the call to action is just come to our store, make sure you’re not hiding the address. Make sure it’s easy to find. And in addition to that, maybe also put it down in the footer. That’s kind of a common spot. If people are looking to contact the business, scroll down to the bottom, let me find their address, right? Make it easy. Make it effortless for your prospects and clients to contact you, turn into clients, turn into leads, things like that.

Next thing to pay attention to is owning the first impression that above the fold, right? And I say that like as newspaper lingo, right? First screen, if we’re talking digitally. When somebody lands on the page, your home page or an inner page, whatever it is, that first screen, that first image that they see right before they start scrolling, that’s where a lot of decisions are made. We need to answer some questions right there and immediately. Who are you? What do you do? How can you help, right?

People need to know that they’re in the right spot, that they did a search, they clicked on a thing. Boom, am I in the right spot or not? Because pretty quick, they’re gonna back out or they’re gonna scroll down the page and continue their journey on your site. Use clear text, meaning clear messaging, right? Not clear color, hidden font, right? But use clear relevant photos to support whatever the content is, whatever the mood is, things like that. Make it happy, make it fun, right? Make it positive wherever possible, make it attractive. Even a short video if that’s something that’s relevant and necessary for you. And again all this is like it’s as soon as possible as high as possible on the page, right? As quick as possible to make people feel like they’re in the right place, give them that confidence.

Next you’re gonna want to make sure that you answer any common questions if people are going to reach out to you, make sure you’re not wasting your time or their time. If there’s simple information that most people ask when they call or email or reach out, can you give that information right there on that webpage to help them trust you, to establish credibility, to establish authority, and to make sure then when they do reach out to you or take that call to action that you know, there’s value there, right?

They’re taking the next step instead of just consuming information that everybody else also asks. So if you’ve been in business for a while or you’re experienced in the product or service area that you’re serving, you should be able to get a short list of questions, anticipate what they would ask if they called, right? Or emailed things like that and put those answers on your website. If possible, if pricing, maybe you want to guard that. I don’t know if that’s a debate people either like to or not. There’s, you know, turnaround time, how long is this going to take? Is this in stock? What’s the process? You know, what kind of FAQs are there?

And by the way, FAQs is a great way to handle this as well, you know, towards the top of the page, just some quick FAQs. Maybe you can have a link to more, but include them, include them clearly, make it easy. And I wouldn’t, maybe it’s not fun to read, right? But make it easy. Again, if somebody’s scanning or skimming the page, like boom, they can stop here. Here’s some questions that I have. Yeah, let me read these quick.

Next is like I was just saying, make it easy to skim or scan. It’s pretty rare that visitors are gonna actually read all of your content. You’re guilty of it too, just like I am, right? We don’t read all the words verbatim on a website, but we are gonna scan, we’re gonna scroll, and we’re gonna stop where we think that we need to dive in, right? So in these either section headings or, you know, just different chunks of your web page. Make sure you’re letting people be able to do that real quick.

Make, I should say present headlines with large readable fonts, you know, again, colors that work, make your headers bold. If you have certain parts on there where like a bullet pointed list will work, that’s always great for just a quick little spot that people can focus their eyes on. You know, read three or four sentences quick, you know, learn more things like that. And then have plenty of white space, you know, don’t jam everything together again. Less is more sometimes in design, make it clean and allow people.

If there’s a paragraph of text, allow them to be able to focus on and read that paragraph instead of having maybe three or four other things competing for their eyes at the same time. And make sure your content is digestible in addition to scannable, right? Even if people are in a rush, people can read, you know, if they choose to take that next step. So make sure that it is readable. I know we’re talking SEO, so we’ll be cramming in keywords and other stuff, but just make sure that it’s good for the human mind and eye to read once they do decide to dive in, even though we’re making it highly skimmable and highly scannable for those people. People are always busy, right? So we just don’t wanna make it hard for them.

Another thing here, and I would say like the typical last but not least in this is to track your results and keep testing. Set up conversion tracking. You can use Google Analytics to do that. If it’s a form fill out, you can usually have like a confirmation or a thank you page that you can track visits to. There’s multiple ways that you can track that. If it’s phone calls, most modern offices will be using either some kind of a virtual phone system, or even if it’s a locally based hardware. There’s some kind of logging, some kind of tracking that you should be able to get how many phone calls are coming in. That’s a great metric.

Are people walking into your store? Can you track those? Right? Pretty much any point of conversion should be tracked. Make sure you’re putting a dashboard together. Even if it’s, I would say like this, don’t overthink it. Even if it’s a simple spreadsheet that you update manually, you know, because you might have a phone system, you know, your web analytics and walk-in, let’s just say you’re kind of the typical three. You probably don’t have a system or a report that will pull all that in together. You’re going to have to do that yourself.

Just make a simple spreadsheet and track these things. It doesn’t have to be overcomplicated. So track those analytics, measure these things, be diligent about that and look to where people are dropping off, right? Are there certain pages where they’re not converting or not calling from? Certain things should rise to the top and help you identify where you can really make those big improvements. Make improvements. Test small changes, you know, don’t overhaul entire page.

Maybe just try the color of that CTA button, where you placed it on the page. Maybe you need a couple buttons just so every few scrolls, they run into the button again. What are the headlines you’re using? Are they compelling? Do people want to keep scrolling down the page? Do people want to get to your call to action? And just improve that over time. You’re never done. It’s not a set it and forget it. You should be always evolving your webpage and your website in general for conversion optimization.

Actually a little bonus tip here too, speaking specifically on if somebody were to fill out a form on your website and then go to like a thank you page or some kind of confirmation message, I think we’re all familiar with that. Having been users ourselves, never let somebody hit a dead end, right? So if they fill out a form on your website or if they call you or if they stop into the store, whatever it is, make sure after they do your CTA after they convert don’t have it be a dead end. So back to that example on that confirmation page don’t just say hey thank you your request was received and a representative will be in touch shortly. Which can all be true and you can have that on there that’s great, but don’t only have that. Maybe just say hey click here to follow us on social media or check out our Facebook page or look at our recent posts. Whatever it is, give them another step. Don’t have dead ends. Give them another step to stay engaged, take another action, learn more about you, subscribe to a thing, whatever it is, keep the relationship going, right? Don’t just stop right there.

All right. So if you’re wondering where your site stands right now, like I mentioned earlier, a lot of this is predicated on having decent SEO to start with. If you want some help there, take our free SEO audit, go to luminatelocal.com. Click on the yellow button for a free SEO audit. It’ll show you your SEO health. More importantly, it helps you build your redesign or your optimization plan on top of a solid foundation, right?

So it’s free. It takes just a few seconds to do. It’ll give you a PDF that shows you the good, the bad, the ugly with your web page and some optimization tips. So take those into consideration. If you’re going to overhaul your web design here, if you’re going to focus on your CTA, things like that. Make sure that you have a solid SEO foundation that you’re building on.

So what are your two routes here? Right? You can either focus on this stuff to help conversions. You can focus on this to help get more business, or you can just ignore it and not. If you choose to ignore it. Of course, you’ll continue pouring your time and energy into getting more traffic, maybe seeing a return, but not maximizing the return. Your website’s going to look okay. But maybe it’s not working for you as good as it could. Right?

And at the end of the day, if you are focusing on this, which you absolutely should, your SEO is going to get better. You’re going to learn more about what’s converting. You’re going to learn more about what people are actually looking for. Your pages are going to evolve. You’re going to convert more leads from the same traffic with, which again, just do the math on that. That’s night and day as far as an investment in time, energy, and money on what it’s going to do for you.

So yeah, you’re going to convert more leads for the same traffic. Your SEO is going to get better. Your lead quality is going to improve because they’re more qualified. Your business is going to grow all without needing to double your ad budget, right? Or chase more visitors, things like that, which will come as you be more prominent and get more reviews and serve more people and convert more clients. You’ll get more traffic. The top of the funnel will fill up just by focusing on better design, better conversions, things like that for your web page.

So just to recap in closing, web design isn’t just about how it looks. I mean, it is right. The aesthetic is very important, but it is even more so about the clarity of your message, the trust of your business, the simplicity in the presentation of your CTA and making it easy to take that next step, right? So having one CTA on the page as a rule of thumb. It’s okay to break that rule if you really need to, right? But once you get on the page, make it an easy action, having a smart structure and setup, clear answers, continue to monitor, continue to track, continue to test. And again, take our free SEO audit to make sure your foundation is there.

So hopefully that helps you out. If you have more questions about this topic, you want me to dive deeper into any of these particular topics, or if you have something else that’s been bugging you for a while. We love your questions. We’ll answer them on the show. And if we do use your question, we’ll send you out a free Luminate Local goody bag with some free swag and some cool stuff in there. If you do want to submit your question, go to luminatelocal.com, scroll down to the bottom, click the link for a question, and you’ll see what you need there to get your question in. And we’d love to have you participate and get your question on the show.

All right, that does it for this episode, everybody. Thanks for listening. I appreciate you and we’ll see you in the next episode. Take care.

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